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The Unorganized Township of Bootstuck
The Unorganized Township of Bootstuck is a documentary-style audio descent into a place that shouldn't exist—but very much insists that it does.
Once a forgotten military outpost in the depths of Northern Ontario, Bootstuck has taken on a life of its own. Discovered only through a pile of mislabeled cassette tapes at a Sudbury garage sale, the story of Bootstuck slowly unravels through scattered interviews, cryptic clues, and increasingly bizarre residents. The deeper you listen, the more you realize — this isn't just a town. It's a puzzle. And somewhere in that puzzle?
A plane crash that changed everything.
Somewhere between folklore, found audio, and fever dream, Bootstuck blurs the line between documentary and delusion—offering listeners a place to get lost in, over and over again.
The Unorganized Township of Bootstuck
TAPE 60 - The Social Media Flyer
In this episode, Bootstuck checks off another major cultural milestone after finally finishing Who’s the Boss—though it takes some time to determine whether the title refers to the vacuum man, the working woman, or the elderly authority figure who “likes a lot of sex and tells everybody what to do.” Confident they’ve solved it, the group prepares to move on to Perfect Strangers, pluralized for safety.
The conversation shifts to springtime and snow removal, which in Bootstuck does not involve shovels, blowers, or common sense. Instead, Caleb has been personally eliminating the snow by warming it in his hands and blowing on it until it turns to water. This method is defended as both scientific and superior, since shovels only relocate snow and create “bigger piles,” which solves nothing.
From there, the episode detours into one of Bootstuck’s most important information systems: the social media flyer. Rather than being printed locally, the flyer simply blows into town—preferably as a double-pager—and is mounted on Bill’s board for communal reading. Its contents are loosely interpreted, sometimes invented, and then loudly explained to anyone nearby. This is how Bootstuck learns about hardware sales, global weather events, rumored Britney Spears concerts, and—most urgently—the approaching blueberry season.
As the interviewer slowly realizes these flyers may just be newspapers drifting in from Somewhere Else, distance itself becomes questionable, measured not in miles but in “sixteen songs and a cigarette.” By the end of the tape, Bootstuck remains proudly informed, wildly inaccurate, and fully dependent on the wind to keep them up to date.
www.bootstuck.com
Yes, me again. So we finished watching Who the Boss and we can't figure it out. I'm not sure if it's the vacuum man or if it's the lady with the job or if it's the old lady who likes a lot of sex and tells everybody what to do. Oh, we found out. That's how it is. Yep. All right. We know who the boss is now, so tomorrow we're gonna watch the perfect stranger man, men.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe we should talk about uh what's happening there. So springtime. Did you get a lot of snow? Do you have to wait for it to melt?
Hat Guy:Oh, yeah, well, we got rid of it. Caleb was blowing on it last week quite a bit. And now three days away from no more snow.
SPEAKER_02:Blowing on it?
Hat Guy:Yep. Grabs it in his hands like this, warms it up a little bit, and then goes like this. Turns it into water. He's like a scientist.
SPEAKER_03:And that's that's how you get rid of the snow. No one uses uh shovel or you have no snow blowers up there.
Hat Guy:Shovel doesn't get rid of snow, it moves it to another location. Well, then you got a bigger pile of snow, don't you? That don't make no sense. I'll send Caleb down for a week. You'll have no snow, guaranteed. Where you live?
SPEAKER_03:Well, uh-huh.
Hat Guy:It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where it snows in the world, because it snowed in Texas this year. Crazy.
SPEAKER_04:How do you know that?
Hat Guy:Social media flyer. It's a double pager.
SPEAKER_04:Let's talk about the social media flyer.
Hat Guy:Yeah, it's one of the best things that come around town. It's segmented into compartments. It just kind of blows around and then compartmentalized into different locations and compartments and things like that. Well we do is we grab it and we stick it up on the community billboard there, that Billbrock.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, Bill's board.
Hat Guy:Billboard, yeah. You know about it?
SPEAKER_03:We've talked about Billsboard, yes.
Hat Guy:Yeah. So he's nice, but his wife's pretty, you know. Uh-oh.
SPEAKER_04:We've heard.
Hat Guy:You know?
SPEAKER_04:Questionable.
Hat Guy:Sure, what's your question?
SPEAKER_04:Oh my god. You don't make the social media flyer in Bootstock?
Hat Guy:Nope. We don't have a facility.
SPEAKER_04:So where does it come from?
Hat Guy:Flyer. Just kind of blows around. It's always better when they double page it.
SPEAKER_04:Oh my god. You mean it actually flies or because it's in the wind?
Hat Guy:Yeah, it's windy up here. You get wind down there, wind goes, woo, lose your cap. Turn it around, fight's on. Woo!
SPEAKER_04:Okay, and can you describe what it looks like?
Hat Guy:Put your hands out in front of you where your shoulders are. Like that. Yeah. Now turn it sideways, but don't move your arms different. About that size. How tall are you? About that size. Written on it is a whole bunch of type of writer-like words. And it says what's new, what's coming around. Sometimes home hardware has a sale.
SPEAKER_04:You know, just out of curiosity, have you ever read a date on these social media flyers?
Hat Guy:Yeah, there's a whole bunch of numbers, and on the bottom there's uh smaller numbers. It's probably not expired. What we do with the social media flyers when we're done reading them, gather everybody else around and we tell everybody else what it's said. So sometimes we kind of make up what's on there. That's how we knew about the Britney Spears concert. We shouted loud, very loud, maybe she heard us. Gerald's looking forward to seeing the outcome of that. This week, oh, this week is an exciting social media flyer that's been blown around town. And it's been telling everybody get ready. Get ready! Blueberry season's coming.
SPEAKER_04:Blueberry season.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, your earring test of things.
SPEAKER_04:Oh my god. Well, uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00:You love to go wandering beneath the clear blue sky.
SPEAKER_04:You know, I I'm starting to realize something. I think that you might be reading newspapers that are blowing in from somewhere else.
Hat Guy:Oh, somewhere else has a newsprint stand. That would make sense. Yep. We haven't been there in a while. We should we should package these up and bring them back over to him. But you know it's nice because Dave's been wallpaper in his house with them.
SPEAKER_04:There's a place called Somewhere Else near you?
Hat Guy:No, near me is pretty far away, believe it or not. Somewhere else is pretty close.
SPEAKER_04:How far is that?
Hat Guy:Oh, sixteen songs and a cigarette.
SPEAKER_04:Sixteen songs? Is this how you measure distance?
Hat Guy:Sometimes. Maybe we should make a social media flyer for y'all. Send it out by the airmail.
SPEAKER_04:You don't have a postal service.
Hat Guy:Postal? No, but Gerald it looks like sometimes he's a little postal.
SPEAKER_04:You mean angry?
Hat Guy:Yeah. You see his eyebrows?
